Techniques for personality and emotion simulation have been contemplated and described. For example, Arjan Egges, Sumedha Kshirsagar and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann of MIRALab—University of Geneva, describe a generic model for personality, mood and emotion simulation for conversational virtual humans in their paper titled Generic Personality and Emotion Simulation for Conversational Agents, Published in Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds archive, Volume 15 Issue 1, March 2004 Pages 1-13. They further present a generic model for updating the parameters related to emotional behavior, as well as a linear implementation of the generic update mechanisms describe a prototype system that uses models in combination with a dialogue system and a talking head with synchronized speech and facial expressions.
With the emergence of 3D graphics, we are now able to create very believable 3D characters that can move and talk. Multi-modal interaction with such characters is possible as the required technologies are getting mature (speech recognition, natural language dialogues, speech synthesis, animation, and so on). However, an important part often missing in this picture is the definition of the force that drives these techniques: the individuality. Egges, Kshirsagar and Magnenat-Thalmann explore structure of this entity as well as its link with perception, dialogue and expression. FIG. 1 depicts how they view the role of personality and emotion as a glue between perception, dialogue and expression.
In emotion simulation research so far, appraisal (obtaining emotional information from perceptive data) is popularly done by a system based on the Ortony, Clore, and Collins model (OCC model). This model specifies how events, agents and objects from the universe are appraised according to respectively their desirability, praiseworthiness and appealingness. The latter three factors are decided upon by a set of parameters: the goals, standards and attitudes. The model delivers us emotional information (i.e. the influence on the emotional state) with respect to the universe and the things that happen/exist in it. In order to have a working model for simulation, one is of course obliged to define the goals, standards and attitudes of the simulator. These factors can be considered as the personality of the simulator. In this case, the personality of a simulator is (partly) domain-dependent. However, more recent research—the OCC model dates from 1988—indicates that personality can be modeled in a more abstract, domain-independent way. In this case, personality is an ensemble of factors/dimensions that each denote an influence on how perception takes place and how behavior is shown. An interface between multi-dimensional and domain-independent personality models and the OCC model does not yet exist. In order to create an integrated model that can handle both appraisal and emotion-based behavior, we need to define how we can use a domain-independent personality model and still use the OCC model for appraisal.
Egges, Kshirsagar and Magnenat-Thalmann, in their paper, investigate the nature of this relationship and propose how to parameterize it so that it can be used in concrete applications.
The effect of personality and emotion on agent behaviour has been researched quite a lot, whether it concerns a general influence on behaviour, or a more traditional planning based method. Various rule-based models, probabilistic models and fuzzy logic systems have been reported in the past. The Egges, Kshirsagar and Magnenat-Thalmann model is not targeted for one specific kind of behaviour synthesizer. They developed a personality and emotion simulator that can be used as a separate module and that can be customized depending on which dialogue system, planning system or reasoning system is used. How behaviour should be influenced by personality and emotion is depending on the application and the system type that is used and it is out of the scope of this paper.
Finally, personality and emotion will have an effect on how behaviour is expressed (speech will have different intonations, a face will make expressions reflecting the emotional state, a body will make different gestures according to the personality and the emotions).
A first step towards such an approach is a system that can simulate personalized facial animation with speech and expressions, modulated through mood. There have been very few researchers who have tried to simulate mood. Vel'asquez proposed a model of emotions, mood and temperament that provides a flexible way of controlling the behaviour of the autonomous entities. Generally, moods and emotions are only differentiated in terms of levels of arousal. Simple models have been proposed for blending, mixing and decaying emotions to subsequently select actions of the agent.
Personality and emotion are basically the same mechanisms only differentiated by two cognitive variables time and duration, and personality can be seen as consistent expression of emotion. An individual is an entity that is constantly changing (having different emotions, moods, etc.). So, when someone speaks of an individual, they always refer to it relative to a time t. The moment that the individual starts existing is defined by t=0. The abstract entity that represents the individual at a time t can be called It. In the simple case, an individual has a personality and an emotional state (not yet taking mood into consideration). The model based on this assumption is called PE. In one framework, the personality is constant and initialized with a set of values on t=0. The emotional state is dynamic and it is initialized to 0 at t=0. Thus It as a tuple (p, et), where p represents the personality and et represents the emotional state at time t. For example, a person will portray emotions (that change over time) based on what happens, but how she obtains these emotions and the behavior that results from it, depends on a static part of her being, the personality.
From psychology research, there are many personality models that consist of a set of dimensions, where every dimension is a specific property of the personality. Take for example the OCEAN model, which has five dimensions (see Table 1) or the PEN model that has three dimensions.
TABLE 1The OCEAN model of personalityFactorDescriptionAdjectives used to describeOpennessOpen mindedness,Imaginative, creative,interest in cultureexplorativeConscientiousnessOrganized, persistent inMethodical, well organized,achieving goalsdutifulExtraversionPreference for andTalkative, energetic, socialbehaviour in socialsituationsAgreeablenessInteractions with othersTrusting, friendly,cooperativeNeuroticismTendency to experienceInsecure, emotionallynegative thoughtsdistressed
Generalizing from these models, it is assumed that a personality has n dimensions, where each dimension is represented by a value in the interval. A value of 0 corresponds to an absence of the dimension in the personality; a value of 1 corresponds to a maximum presence of the dimension in the personality. The personality p of an individual can then be represented by the following vector:
      p    =          [                                                  α              1                                                            ⋮                                                              α              n                                          ]        ,          ⁢            ∀              i        ∈                  [                      1            ,            n                    ]                      :                  α        i            ∈              [                  0          ,          1                ]            
As an example, an OCEAN personality can be specified (thus n=5) that is very open, very extravert but not very conscientious, quite agreeable and not very neurotic:
  p  =      [                            0.8                                      0.1                                      0.7                                      0.5                                      0.05                      ]  
Emotional state has a similar structure as personality. The emotional state is a set of emotions with a certain intensity. The size of this set depends on the theory that is used. For example, in the OCC model, 22 emotions are defined, while others may define 6 that are used as a basis for facial expression classification. The emotional state is something that can change over time (for example due to a decay factor). Therefore,
an emotional state can be relative to a time t. The emotional state can be defined et as an m-dimensional vector, where all m emotion intensities are represented by a value in the interval [0, 1]. A value of 0 corresponds to an absence of the emotion; a value of 1 corresponds to a maximum intensity of the emotion. This vector is given as follows:
      e    t    =      {                                                      [                                                                                          β                      1                                                                                                            ⋮                                                                                                              β                      m                                                                                  ]                        ,                                          ∀                                  i                  ∈                                      [                                          1                      ,                      m                                        ]                                                              :                                                β                  i                                ∈                                  [                                      0                    ,                    1                                    ]                                                                                                        if              ⁢                                                          ⁢              t                        >            0                                                0                                                    if              ⁢                                                          ⁢              t                        =            0                              
Furthermore, an emotional state history ωt can be defined that contains all emotional states until et, thus:ωt=<e0,e1, . . . ,et>
An extended version of the PE model can be given by including mood. As such, the individual It can be defined as a triple (p, mt, et), where mt represents the mood at a time t. Mood has been accepted as the notions of personality and emotional state. Mood is less static than personality and less fluent than emotional state. It is an intermediate form that exists between the two and that describes a rather static state of being that lasts longer than the average emotion as illustrated in FIG. 2. This state of being can be one-dimensional (being in a good or a bad mood) or perhaps multi-dimensional (feeling in love, feeling depressed).
A possibility of having multiple mood dimensions can be defined so a how many dimensions mood actually has can be selected. A mood dimension can be defined as a value that is either negative or positive and that lies in the interval [−1, 1]. Supposing that there are k mood dimensions, the mood can be described by a vector:
      m    t    =      {                                                      [                                                                                          γ                      1                                                                                                            ⋮                                                                                                              γ                      k                                                                                  ]                        ,                                          ∀                                  i                  ∈                                      [                                          1                      ,                      k                                        ]                                                              :                                                γ                  i                                ∈                                  [                                                            -                      1                                        ,                    1                                    ]                                                                                                        if              ⁢                                                          ⁢              t                        >            0                                                0                                                    if              ⁢                                                          ⁢              t                        =            0                              
Just like for the emotional state, there is also a history of mood, σt, that contains the moods m0 until mt:σt=<m0,m1, . . . ,mt>
Systems such as that provided by Memoirs From Heaven of Temecula, Calif. provide for posthumous letter delivery for men and women of United States armed forces and first responders. Memoirs from Heaven allows for a person's deepest thoughts and feelings, as well as the words left unsaid, to be delivered to your loved ones.
Memoirs From Heaven checks with the Social Security Death Index (SDDI) periodically to determine when to start delivering a person's pre-written letters to pre-determined recipients at pre-determined times based on the scheduled information the user provides when they sign up. The writer may review and revise the letters as often as they would like before they pass away.
However, using the Memoirs From Heaven system and other systems like it, once the writer-user passes away, the writer-user's letters are static. Further, there is no way for a user to impart situation specific advice, encouragement or to provide interaction with his children, relatives or friends have he or she has passed. The system and method of the present invention solves these and other problems in the prior art.